


hold on to hope if you've got it

by elsaclack



Series: in every lifetime, i'll find you [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Car Accidents, F/M, and made jake almost lose his mind again, basically i almost killed amy again, what else is new i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: He wonders, distantly, what the soul mate science says about situations like this. He wonders as the cool backside of Amy’s hand presses against his forehead; he wonders as he loses touch completely with reality, as his mind comes unhinged and tears spewing down his face spread at an alarming rate across the mattress beneath his violently tilted head.Who's he supposed to turn to when she can’t be there for him?





	hold on to hope if you've got it

**Author's Note:**

> LISTEN i’m not going to lie to you guys, big fat chunks of this are recycled from an almost-fic that i scrapped while trying to write _and i’ll tell you all about it when i see you again_. the writing was not bad enough to warrant deleting the whole thing, tho, so i’m using it here now lmao
> 
> for those who are not familiar with this universe, the basic concept is that soulmates are able to feel each other’s emotions. one can feel the connection before the other, and the one who can’t feel the connection initially only feels it after kissing the one who does feel it. in this scenario, jake could feel the connection before amy. i’ve already written a few one-shots in this universe ([here](http://elsaclack.tumblr.com/post/155743131525/wait-ok-ok-ok-so-in-the-au-is-it-jake-or-amy-who), [here](http://elsaclack.tumblr.com/post/155865795565/for-the-soulmate-au-how-did-amy-realize-they-were), [here](http://elsaclack.tumblr.com/post/156914596950/any-updates-on-the-soulmate-fic), and [here](http://elsaclack.tumblr.com/post/155719748155/alright-but-going-off-your-soulmate-au-they)). if you’ve read all of those, then u already know the set-up for this particular one-shot
> 
> if u haven’t, the only other thing u need to know is that jake and amy got into a fight before amy stormed off. jake could feel her anger and then he felt this weird explosion in his chest and then he felt a whole lot of nothing.
> 
> this one-shot is set a few hours after that.

The snow is falling sideways outside of a window on Brooklyn Methodist Hospital’s second floor.

Jake’s not sure, exactly, when it started snowing.  He doesn’t even really know what time it is anymore, just that it’s dark, but he can see fat white flurries hurtling parallel to earth when they pass just beneath the flickering yellow light cast by an old street light right across the street outside. He grips the paper cup full of stale coffee that Rosa handed to him a while ago a bit harder, trying to seek any remaining warmth the liquid might still hold with freezing fingers.

He shifts a little, trying to get the blood flowing through his legs again without making too much noise. He winces at the jarring sound of his keys sliding across the plastic beneath him, freezing in place, breath held, waiting.

The only other sounds in the room are the quiet whoosh of a ventilator and the steady, muted beep of a pulse monitor stationed on the other side of the bed to Jake’s left. The figure in that bed does not stir.

Aside from the quiet disruption from his keys, he is surrounded on all sides by a thick, impenetrable silence. He knows there’s a nurse’s station down the hall, but it seems that the flurry of activity he’d witnessed hours earlier upon first arriving here has died down for the night. Every now an then a muffled and disembodied voice will reach him through the open door, rousing him, bringing him back to the surface of reality from the hellish nightmare hurricane of thoughts he seems to be drowning in at any given moment.

This is not the first time Jake has seen Amy Santiago unconscious in a hospital bed. It’s not even the second, or the third. Four times, now, he’s taken up temporary residence at his partner’s bedside; four times, he’s waited for those warm brown eyes to flutter open. He’s seen her concussed, seen her chloroformed, seen her with all manner of scrapes and bruises and split lips and, once, a broken nose. He should be used to it by now - injury is just an occupational hazard that he has long-since come to terms with - but each time it happens is more jarring than the last.

And this, the fourth time, is worse than the last three put together. Because this time, he can’t feel her presence fluttering just out of their connection’s reach.

(The first three times had been incredibly unsettling even so; to stare at her face, so still in unconsciousness, while feeling every ounce of frustration surge through his own veins as she struggled to break through the surface was a strange feeling at best. He’d even found it briefly amusing the second time, taking care to bury his face in his jacket to hide his broad grin from the others. They hadn’t known back then.

He hadn't bothered hiding the anguish this time.)

He’s seen her in pretty bad shape before, it’s true. But he’s never seen the mangled aftermath of a head-on collision; he’s never seen the broken remains of an SUV going ninety miles an hour on the wrong side. The fact that emergency responders had even gotten her out of the shredded mess left over from her car was a miracle on it’s own.

The fact that she hadn’t died on impact is at least three separate miracles.

He hasn’t done a ton of research about the science behind soulmate connections, even though he knows it exists. He’s learned what he knows through experience, through listening to his mother chat on the phone and watching dramatic representations on television. Amy’s read just about every academic article out there about it all and tried to explain it to him late one night - something about chemical alterations on a genetic level that their ancestors experienced centuries earlier, when some kind of magic space rock ( _his_ words, _not_ hers) crashed into earth - but he’d been distracted by the low tide of affection pulsing back and forth between the two of them, caught up in the scant space between their entangled forms beneath Amy’s soft clean sheets -

Magic, that’s what he says. That’s all he needs to know. This connection he has, this love he’s worked so hard for, it’s magic.

But sitting here at Amy’s bedside at two in the morning, willing that numbed connection to spark back to life even as he watches the bruises slowly blossom across her broken skin, feels like anything but magic. He’s grown so accustomed to sharing this space inside himself with her, to making room for her emotions, but now she’s gone and his are spilling out over the edges, bursting from the seams, desperate to escape to safe harbor in Amy herself.

He was seven years old the last time he had to sort just his emotions all by himself. He’s forgotten how to do it, he's forgotten what the loneliness felt like.

“Please come back, Amy,” Jake says raggedly; it’s the first time he’s spoken in hours, and the coffee in his hand is in danger of splashing over the sides of his cup from how hard his hands are trembling. “ _Please_ , I - I need you, I can’t, I can’t -” he cuts himself off with a desperate gasp. There aren’t words to encapsulate it. It goes beyond not being able to function without her - Jake is fairly certain that the entirety of his being will dissolve without Amy Santiago to anchor him to reality. “Please don’t leave me,” he begs her in a voice that is shattering, disintegrating over reality, spilling across the too-clean tiled floor beneath his feet with the coffee that used to be in his cup.

Amy remains still, unmoving, unknowing.

So Jake turns to the next logical presence in the room - the ceiling. “Don’t take her from me,” he says, and his voice is louder now, louder and angrier and more demanding. “Don’t take her, she’s too _good_ \- she has too much left to do, you can’t just take her away - please, _please_ , I _need her_ -” the sound of his now-empty paper cup hitting the floor is jarring and it sends his heart jutting up into his throat, cutting his speech off in an ugly, broken half-sob-half-grunt.

The last time he was anywhere near this inconsolable, Amy was out of town on a case. She’d called him just minutes after his father cancelled once again, she'd instructed him to lay down on his couch, and she'd spent an entire hour soothing him over the phone. She’d put off interviewing a perp - she'd put off _doing her job_ - to comfort him.

He wonders, distantly, what the soul mate science says about situations like this. He wonders as the cool backside of Amy’s hand presses against his forehead; he wonders as he loses touch completely with reality, as his mind comes unhinged and tears spewing down his face spread at an alarming rate across the mattress beneath his violently tilted head.

Who's he supposed to turn to when she can’t be there for him?

* * *

He’s alone for a long time after that. Not to say that the others aren’t there. Jake himself is present, surrounded on all sides by members of Amy’s family and the Nine-Nine crew and Amy’s trivia team and even a few of her neighbors (leave it to her to actually be _friends_ with her neighbors, he thinks affectionately before sinking even further into the bottomless pit of despair he’s taken residence in). He’s physically there, clutching Amy’s hand nearly constantly and only turning away when the nurses come in to change her hospital gown.

However, mentally - emotionally - he is alone. Even Charles can’t help (despite how desperately he’s been trying), can't reach through that thick fog encasing Jake's consciousness. The truth is, without Amy, Jake feels as if he’s been dropped in a vast desert. Wandering alone across utter desolation, seconds away from falling to his knees and never getting up again.

The nurses are kind, understanding, going so far as to bring a futon from a room on a different floor so he can at least get somewhat horizontal when he sleeps beside her at night. They sneak extra Jell-O cups when the doctors aren’t looking and regularly rotate Amy’s heated blankets so that she’s never cold after finding Jake rubbing warmth back into her ice-cold feet one night. He’s subjected regularly to sympathetic looks; one of them even baked him a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

He hates how much it makes his empty chest ache almost as much as he hates that Amy isn't there to enjoy the special treatment with him.

(There's this one nurse in particular whose sympathetic looks are laced with a thick kind of melancholic sorrow; Jake catches sight of a thin gold wedding band dangling from a chain around the nurse's neck that matches the band on her left ring finger one night when she came in to change Amy's pillows. He hadn't been able to look her in the eye when she handed him the Jell-O cup that night.)

He takes to wandering around the hospital whenever Amy’s room gets too crowded. It’s a strange feeling to be away from her at first, almost like leaving a room where he lost his phone when he knows his phone is on silent (except the phone is the love of his life and the silent mode is a coma and okay so maybe it’s a hell of a lot more painful than that), but after a few times it’s not so bad. He will undeniably be the first person who knows when she wakes; he doesn’t allow himself to think about the flip side of that coin.

For three long weeks, he lives his life without a single shimmering hint of existence from the soulmate he’s loved with all his heart from the age of seven.

All of that changes on a Tuesday evening.

He’s in the hospital gift shop, of all places, internally debating the respective pros and cons of gummy bears versus gummy worms, and as he’s squinting at the nutrition facts on the back of the gummy bear bag he feels it. It’s small and tentative, a dewdrop landing in a vast ocean that has been still and silent for far too long. Jake almost dismisses it as a little stab of hunger.

But then he feels it again, and then again a bit more strongly, and then - and then it’s an entire civilization suddenly rising from the depths, plunging past the mirrored surface to soar sky-high. His breath catches and expands in his throat as a powerful wave of disorientation seizes the space between his eyes and nearly knocks him backwards into the metal shelves full of glass vases behind his shoulders.

He’s dizzy and nauseous and _scared_ and - and _he’s not alone anymore_.

“A- _Amy_ ,” he gasps.

The world becomes a blur around him (he may or may not have dropped the gummies in his haste) and everything is flying and he can’t move fast enough because his limbs are in molasses and he’s so scared because this little timid flicker might snuff out at any second and he’s going to miss her -

But when he blinks she’s there, her eyelids are fluttering but she’s looking up at him and there’s recognition there beneath the pulses of fear and nausea and disorientation and he’s not sure, not sure, how he ended up on his knees beside her bed but her mother is gripping his shoulders and her brothers are yelling at him to calm down and he’s got an arm around her chest, fingers in her hair, gingerly pulling her closer and Amy’s hand is clumsy when she pats his elbow where it rests against her sternum but it’s warm with life for the first time in three weeks and he’s crying into her pillow, _sobbing_ , and she’s not scared anymore.

Neither is he.

It’s security, it’s warmth, it’s reassurance, it’s faith and relief and a state of total calm and he knows, he _knows_ , that when she drifts back into unconsciousness it’s with the solid understanding that his arms are still going to be around her when she’s strong enough to be awake again.

He sobs harder, and harder still, because her presence is soft and warm and alive, settling back into that long-empty spot in his chest. It’s balm for his exposed, rubbed-raw soul; it’s the lush oasis he’s been searching for.

"Thank you," he whispers hoarsely into her pillow. " _Thank you_."

* * *

His arms are _not_ still around her when she wakes up again, but her hand is firmly, securely wrapped in both of his.

They’re alone this time, and he’s not even looking at her when the fluttering starts. He’s in the seat to her left and he’s got _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ held open between his elbows on the mattress; his right hand bounces back and forth between holding hers and flipping the pages.

He is, admittedly, _very_ into the book when he feels that first little pulse of awareness. His heart is already thudding uncomfortably fast in response to Ron's desperation to reach Hermione as she's being tortured when he feels a disconnected throb in his chest; he tears his eyes away from the text before him and stares, breath held, as Amy’s eyes roll beneath her fluttering eyelids.

The book falls closed when he shifts toward her but he pays it no mind, for just a moment later her eyelids finally part and she stares, blinking and disoriented, up at the ceiling above her.

“Amy,” he whispers, and her gaze flicks to his face. He can feel her wading through the murkiness but there is an undeniable wave of sheer joy that splashes through both of their systems, originating from her end. He reaches up and brushes his fingers through her hair, nearly choking on a gasp at the painful throb of affection that seizes her chest and his alike. She closes her eyes beneath his touch so he keeps a steady stroking motion going, biting the inside of his cheek as he watches her chest rise and fall beneath her gown. It’s more exaggerated now that she’s awake, now that she’s doing the breathing on her own rather than with mechanical assistance. He banishes the thoughts quickly, willing himself to stay in the happiness of this moment for her sake. Her eyes open again and he leans forward, closer to her, and smiles. “Hey, there she is.”

Her fingers flex where they're wrapped around his hand, and he squeezes back as gently as he can. Her throat works sluggishly and her eyelids are sticking together but she’s awake, clearly fighting through the morphine still flooding her system. She’s tired, in that thin and pitiful way of a child at the end of a long day, and he’s never wanted to just hold her more than he does in this moment. It’s rare to find Amy so utterly vulnerable and defenseless; the open, exposed sense of trust thrumming in her chest gives birth to an overwhelming desire to  _protect_.

He stands, propels himself forward, until he’s hunched over and hovering above her. His lips land against her forehead and he feels a dozen bursts of unidentifiable emotions in his chest, like a minefield set off all at once. "I missed you so much," he whispers against her skin, and her soft answering hum breaks pitch in her throat. When he pulls away, Amy’s eyes are closed. “Go back to sleep if you need to, sweetheart,” he murmurs as he gently strokes her forehead with his thumb. “I’ll be right here when you wake up. I’ve got you, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

Her eyes stay closed.

* * *

“I could feel you,” she tells him in a broken whisper.

Jake inches his chair closer, shifting so that their joined hands rest against his thigh slightly elevated by his crossed legs rather than the mattress. Amy’s watching him - hasn’t really stopped watching him since she woke up an hour earlier - but this is the first time he’s heard her speak since before that horrible accident nearly a month earlier. Despite the fact that he's itching to reach for the glass of water he's already made her drink half of, the sound of her voice does strange things to his heart, and judging by the flash in her eyes, Amy can tell.

“I couldn’t feel you,” Jake admits softly. He’s stroking the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb and her skin is soft and warm and alive, and he loves her more than anything, anything in the whole galaxy. “You disappeared. I thought - at first -”

Her brows furrow and her breath catches as that old haunted loneliness briefly flickers back to life inside his chest, and Jake doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I could feel you right -” her hand strains in his and he lifts them both, lets her guide them closer to his chest, until the end of her extended index finger presses against the space just over his heart. “You were right there the whole time. And when the pain got too - too much,” she pauses to swallow, and he ignores the twinge in his chest, briefly recalling what her doctors said about the disorientation taking a while to wear off completely, “you wouldn’t let me quit. You wouldn’t give up on me.”

“I’ll never give up on you,” he tells her plainly, leaning forward until her entire palm is flattened against his chest. “You’re my soulmate, remember? But also, you're my partner. I got your back, always. I _chose_ you, just like you chose me. And I’ll choose you every single time. You’re my partner and my soulmate and - and I love you.”

Their tears start simultaneously as the truth of the statement washes through them, as the realization that this is the first time either one of them has vocalized it suddenly solidifies in both of their minds. She’s known, she’s _had_ to have known; there’s no denying the all-consuming immersion of it, the way it permeates every single aspect of his entire life. But he’s never said it, he realizes as he watches her expression unfold to purely unguarded adoration as the revelation ignites every part of her. He’s never said it even though he’s been thinking it since he was seven years old, since before he even knew her name.

“I love you, too,” she whispers, and it’s like his soul has found shelter in a hurricane, like he’s finally found a safe place to rest after months of unending danger. Amy Santiago loves him and he knows, now, that everything is going to be okay. "Jake, please - please come here and kiss me right now."

He doesn't let go of her hand as he stands, stoops, and kisses her softly and slowly. He doesn't let go even when her free hand grips the back of his neck and she urges him up onto the mattress with her, or when she shifts the wrong way and hisses in pain, or when she threatens to set Rosa on him when he tries to roll off the mattress.

(Her leg may be broken in three places and she may have six broken ribs, but that doesn’t stop her from nuzzling closer once he's settled in beside her. It doesn’t stop her from pulling his arm to drape lightly across her middle, from coaxing him to bury his face in her hair, from tangling their feet together under her blankets. It certainly doesn’t stop her from falling asleep in his arms, breath warming his chest, for the first time in a month.

And Jake is lulled to sleep by a heady cocktail of his and her combined relief at their respective proximity and Amy’s steady heartbeat marked by the heart monitor behind him.)

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted on tumblr but i cross-posted here with some minor tweaks!!


End file.
